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Talk:Derpy/@comment-69.179.162.121-20130518023549/@comment-5870562-20130524163854
Whether you personally like Derpy or not is your own choice. Also, the numerical ratio of people who like Derpy to people who dislike Derpy is completely irrelevant. Why? Because the validity of an opinion as a reason for influencing physical behavior has nothing to do with the popularity of that opinion. Many people in the 1400s had the idea that the earth was flat. This did not make it factually accurate (and intriguingly also made it no less accurate either, because subjective judgments aren't by themselves tied to any fact!). This doesn't make the people who believed in a flat earth wrong or naughty, just ignorant. The only people who are wrong and need a head check are people who continue to believe in a flat earth now that scientific fact became available that proved flat earth theory was incorrect. Hence the only people who are wrong in their opinions about Derpy are people who think its okay to force those who disagree with them about her appeal to accept their opinion by recton or other forced means without a basis in fact supporting their position. Many people in 1941 Germany had the opinion that Jews were bad and should be genocidally exterminated. Does this make what was in Germany at the time a minority opinion against such behavior less valid? Of course not. Because the fact was that being a Jew and being a bad person were in no way consistently factually connected at a widespread level. Another fact is that promoting one subjective opinion such as "I dislike the word Derpy" with a deliberate edit/retcon over another subjective opinion "I like the word Derpy" is morally wrong without a similar factual connection at a widespread level. Such a connection does not exist in my opinion and if it does, at this point it certainly has not been demonstrated by anyone on the pro-edit side. This DOES NOT mean that an individual factual connection cannot exist where a single person has had a set of real experiences that make them dislike the name Derpy in their personal life. But the correct solution for that person is: just turn off the show NOT force everypony else to accept my personal experience as more valid than theirs with no factual reinforcement; I hope from my details you can see where I am making the difference between these two ideas. Were there some bad Jewish people in Germany in 1941? Sure. But should any innocent Jewish person have been killed because some were bad? No. Should any Derpy supporter be deprived of hearing or seeing her original name because any number of viewers, or even a majority of people might simply dislike it? No because if you dislike something, that is not grounds for punishing people who don't agree with you without proving a practical reason why you should dislike it. Note that I admit it might be remotely possible that Pony Production Team didn't care about right and wrong but felt that a nameless pony was more profitable. Seems unlikely since I don't see how you can effectively control copyright and marketing of a nameless product very well. Also, you can easily demonstrate from the real world prices for Derpy merch on eBay, etsy and WeLoveFine et. al. that Derpy merch is indeed very popular even when named.